“No! Bad dragon!” Molly, wielding a broadsword, has just saved two clueless church ladies from being eaten by Steve, a Sea Beast who, at the moment, looks like a mobile home. (Shape-changing is just one of Steve’s many talents.) Now, she’s...
In this age of Trump, I find that, more and more, I’m thinking of my friends Neil, Ben and Jean. In this time of hate and fear-mongering, I want to tap into their hope and faith and joy for living. I’ve played basketball with Neil at the school...
Okay. Christopher Moore is funny. Silly. Delightfully loopy. Practical Demonkeeping is the story of a man- and woman-eating demon named Catch who descends on the town of Pine Cove with his human master-slave Travis, a former seminarian who…...
Pity the poor publisher. Knopf had a great manuscript on its hands from Denis Boyles, but how to market it? The solution was a book cover and title that were tantalizing in their seeming quaintness. The jacket is a sober red with images at the...
A.J. Liebling, that caustic, sarcastic, witty New Yorker magazine writer, was no fan of Chicago as he made clear in his 1952 book Chicago: The Second City. Consider his sardonic description of the cityscape: Seen from the taxi, on the long ride...
Job is one of the oddest books in the Bible — odd in a scary way, in an unsettling way, in a faith-shaking way. Job is a rich man who is a devout believer in God. But, up in heaven, one of the multitudes in attendance to the Most High — a being...
As 1840 drew to a close and during the first month of 1841, Abraham Lincoln was “crazy as a loon,” according to his law partner and biographer William Herndon. For the second time in Lincoln’s life, his friends feared that he would commit...
The diminutive and aptly named Pocket — court jester of the late lamented (and demented) King Lear of Britain and then consort to the (alas) also late Cordelia, Queen of France, England, Spain, etc., and her envoy to 13th-century Venice to block...
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